TOUKI BOUKI

Djibril Diop Mambéty paints a vivid, fractured portrait of Senegal in the early 1970s in his French New Wave–influenced fantasy-drama. Two young lovers long to leave Dakar for the glamour and comforts of France, but their escape plan is beset by complications both concrete and mystical. Widely considered one of the most important African films ever made, Touki Bouki “single-handedly challenged stale critical assumptions that African cinema was inextricably wedded to social realism and immune to experimental narrative strategies “ (Richard Porton).

MEEK’S CUTOFF

It’s 1845, and a wagon train of three families depends on guide Stephen Meek to take them over Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. In her revisionist take on Hollywood’s most popular genre, indie stalwart Kelly Reichardt shifts the common focus from male-centered action to the perspective of Michelle Williams’ steady strength, offering a feminist, minimalist story that allows uncertainty, questions the wisdom of attributing enemy status to a Native American wanderer, and evades the sweeping vistas of classic widescreen Westerns.

MEAT

Frederick Wiseman (U.S. 1976) 113 minutes. 16MM.

In 1976, Wiseman went to the Monfort Meat Packing Company in Greeley, Colorado to observe “animal fabrication,” the system through which cattle and sheep become consumer goods. The film depicts the entire process, illustrating unseen aspects of large scale agriculture in the American West, ranging from automated production to transportation and labor management.

MIKEY AND NICKY

Recently restored and rarely seen on the big screen, Mikey and Nicky “is the great gangster movie of the 1970s, a welcome corrective to The Godfather” (The New Yorker). Billed as a black comedy, though more absurd than funny, the story is set over a long, tense night in Philadelphia shared by two friends: Nicky, a small-time white-collar crook who learns there’s a mob hit out on him, and Mikey, the fellow criminal and lifelong friend who Nicky calls for help.

FOUR CORNERS

James Benning (U.S. 1997) 76 min. 16MM.

“Here, the geographic and wholly imaginary place Four Corners, that favorite tourist destination where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet, becomes a kind of theoretical ground zero, the site from which [veteran filmmaker James] Benning can give voice to other, pointedly unofficial sorts of spurious conspiracy (the history of the United States), but one in which each sound and each image hints at a story not yet fully told (the histories of the United States).” – Manohla Dargis, LA Weekly

ALIENS

Seven years after Ridley Scott’s original Alien, James Cameron’s sequel finds nightmare-stricken Ellen Ripley stranded on planet LV-426, where she and her elite platoon of Marines battle a determined enemy. Drawing on Vietnam era “warspeak” for his dialogue–and PTSD for Ripley’s psychology–Cameron focuses “more on terror, less on horror,” withholding the appearance of the movie’s hostile aliens until nearly an hour’s screen time has passed.

EXOTICA

Atom Egoyan’s cryptic Exotica revolves around a strip club where young dancers cater to their customers’ sexual and psychological needs. The film that put Egoyan on the map of international auteurs to watch, Exotica exhibits the director’s preoccupations with the nature of personal tragedy and the mysterious bonds between lost souls.

SOGOBI

James Benning (U.S. 2001) 87 min.

A central figure in American independent cinema for the last four decades, James Benning focused on his home state for the sweeping millennial California Trilogy, a three-part topographical study executed with the mathematician-turned-filmmaker’s customary formal restraint and compositional precision. Sogobi, the final part in the trilogy, takes to the Californian wilderness that remains. “The artist is someone who pays attention and reports back.” – J.B

PAN’S LABYRINTH

The grim reality of the Spanish Civil War and the opulent mystery of an underground fairy realm mesh in Guillermo del Toro’s gothic allegory of a young heroine tasked with overcoming the violent danger of not just her fantasy netherworld but the real one – where war and Fascism are the genuine horror.